I knew we were in love because as we began talking about our future, it was clear that we shared the same goals and had the same core values. Whether we are sleeping, walking or having sex, holding hands fiercely bonds us. People physically meet their partners halfway, and holding hands feels like a commitment between two people, even just for the time being. Yes, there is the physicality of our nerve endings and such, but I presume there has to be a stronger psychological impact. After he reached his hand back to hold mine, I felt inspired enough to write a poem. I knew he would always be there for me, and vice versa.įunny enough, I experienced a similar moment with a boyfriend in college. Walking down 8th Street between A and B, he reached back to hold my hand. Okay, this sounds clichéd as hell, but there seems to be a common thread between people offering their hands and quickly thinking of love. Notice how many participants are utterly stuck, and how many look stunned, emotional and elated, all at the prospect of being asked to define "love." Holding Hands Likewise, when many of us realize we’re in love or we’ve fallen in love, we are at a loss of words. In addition to many studies and articles, here are some of the conclusions I drew: “Uhh.”Īs you can see in the video below, even the thought of love leaves us speechless. Thanks to Google, I was able to capture a handful of anonymous responses of people describing when they knew they were in love. In my attempt to make sense of both life and my feelings about all of it, I turned to research. It is the Antarctic of the human experience, richly feeding the oceans of our emotions, yet somehow remaining elusive and unknown. When do we know we’re in love with someone? It can’t be one event, but maybe it’s one conglomeration of feelings or experiences.įor years, throughout literature, science, psychology and more, we have constantly searched for the meaning behind “what it means to be in love,” and when we know it to be true. With all of this happening in my head and all these feelings running around, I wondered when other people were able to figure this out. How can one really forget once he or she has been caught by love? During the countless times I’ve echoed to my friends, “I can’t settle when I know what exists,” I think - without knowing - what I really mean is “I can’t settle when there’s someone I already love.” I was then able to comprehend the feelings were worlds apart. While I loved my ex-boyfriend, I was never truly in love with him, and frankly, I didn’t realize this until I fell in love with someone else. Maybe that’s what love does best: catches us off guard in the times and places we never imagined.įor me, this unsuspecting place was absent of an actual relationship. I've decided love is like the friend nobody likes, showing up to parties perpetually uninvited. It is because of this short piece, I’ve had this weird, uncomfortable, lukewarm feeling in the bottom of my stomach that I now know to perceive as “love.” Granted, you can’t always believe everything you read or take someone’s experiences as your own, but is that not what sharing our stories is about? It's about ability to perfectly capture through words, pictures, films or sounds the experiences we can only feel in our hearts. It occurred to me then, in the trenches of my blankets, enveloped by Netflix and surrounded by bunched clouds of Kleenex, that this was love. Then, all of a sudden, her words manifested into an abrupt reality as I read: She was so painfully broken that it almost increased her ability to feel alive.Īs Smith went on describing all of this, I related and felt everything she wrote in my own chest. She explained she wasn't experiencing classic heartache like her other relationships, but instead, she was inevitably, utterly heartbroken. In her piece, “ Swearing Off the Modern Men,” Jochebed Smith described her post-breakup experience. However, when I read a beautifully written piece about love in The New York Times, I knew it was certifiably true. I can’t help but shrivel up inside and prepare for an anxiety attack when I type out those words.
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